VMware Cloud on AWS

Announcing VMware Cloud on AWS Integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

Enterprises increasingly rely on VMware Cloud on AWS to migrate, extend, and better protect their on-premises VMware workloads in the cloud. With the advent of modern technologies and applications, these enterprises are seeing an unprecedented growth in data volumes. Statista reported that overall data produced will grow from an estimated 47 Zettabytes (1 ZB = 1 billion terabytes) to an estimated 612 ZB by 2030. To store and manage this explosive growth in data, while creating secure and easy access for developers to leverage the data, enterprises demand scalable storage infrastructure. But it is not easy. They face many challenges such as: 

  • Increase in costs due to inability to scale storage and compute independently: Customers want to minimize costs for storage heavy workloads by attaching a storage option that scales independent of compute resources.  
  • Need for a data store with agile data management capabilities: Companies need comprehensive and consistent data management capabilities for external storage, such as snapshots, clones, replication, etc. to simplify their data storage and agile data management requirements. 
  • Increase in costs, time, and risk due to a need to learn new technology and skill-sets : Customers also need a storage solution that uses familiar technology with minimal learning curve and less complexity while migrating on-premises storage intensive workloads to the cloud. 
Storage requirements for workloads can vary despite similar compute and memory requirements

Solution: To help customers resolve these challenges while scaling their storage infrastructure, we are announcing VMware Cloud on AWS integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP. This unique and innovative integration from the leaders in public cloud and storage technology is a jointly engineered, AWS managed external NFS datastore built on NetApp’s ONTAP file system that can be attached to VMware Cloud on AWS vSphere cluster. It provides customers with flexible, high-performance virtualized storage infrastructure that scales independently of compute resources.

With over 20 years of history, NetApp and VMware have delivered cost-effective, high-performance virtualized server and storage infrastructure. Now, with this seamless integration of Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP with VMware Cloud on AWS, customers will get the consistent, simplified operations experience across their on-premises and cloud environments.

VMware Cloud on AWS integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

Some of the key features of this solution are:

  • For customers requiring high storage capacity for their workloads (e.g. big data, data warehousing, and VDI workloads), this integration provides AWS managed, high performance NFS datastore built on NetApp’s ONTAP file system that can be attached to the VMware Cloud on AWS vSphere cluster.
  • Customers can grow the storage capacity as needed without the need to purchase additional host instances.
  • This service brings together the same features, performance, and administrative capabilities that hundreds of thousands of NetApp customers use on-premises, with the simplicity, agility, security, and scalability of the cloud.
  • This integration provides familiar NetApp ONTAP’s data management capabilities in the cloud, such as space efficient snapshots, cloning, compression, deduplication, compaction, and replication, giving enhanced protection against ransomware.
  • Scheduled maintenance and backup orchestration is included with the service.
  • Storage capacity can be added by percentage or absolute value. The minimum storage capacity per file system (i.e., data not tiered to capacity pool storage) is 1024 GB. The maximum storage capacity per file system is 192 TiB uncompressed, however, customers can store more data by using deduplication, compression, and other efficiency mechanisms to reduce the required storage capacity.
  • Ability to change data throughput of the file system using the AWS Console with 512 MB/s, 1024 MB/s, and 2048 MB/s options.

VMware Cloud on AWS integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP will help customers in the following use cases:

  1. Dynamic storage scaling: Grow storage capacity independent of compute to support storage-heavy data sets, burst storage capacity needs, and to build storage repositories in the cloud.
  2. Workload migration: Migrate storage intensive workloads from on-premises data center to the cloud, or when you have in-guest storage connectivity requirements such as NFS, SMB, or ISCSI.
  3. Agile data management: Migrate and manage data easily in the cloud and protect it against ransomware attacks.
  4. Data protection: Improve data retention with backup, archive, and data replication from on-premises file servers to the cloud.

With VMware Cloud on AWS integration with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, customers will be able to realize the following benefits:

  1. Lower TCO: Optimize costs for storage heavy workloads by attaching an external storage option that scales independently of compute resources thus avoiding any unused/wasted capacity. Customers can also leverage NetApp ONTAP’s comprehensive and consistent data management capabilities such as snapshots, clones, replication, etc., to simplify and make data management more agile while lowering costs.
  2. Increased flexibility: Attach storage to multiple SDDC’s and have the flexibility to define performance and storage requirements based on specific workload needs.
  3. Familiar technology leading to better productivity: Reduce risks and complexity while migrating storage intensive workloads to the cloud by using familiar VMware and NetApp ONTAP technology with minimal learning curve. No need to reengineer the data layer or modify the application code, thus minimizing the need to re-architect the storage design.
  4. Improved time to market: Increase flexibility to scale the storage infrastructure and familiar technology across hybrid cloud environment allows customers to accelerate their workload migrations and bring out new applications and features faster.

For a deeper dive into the technical aspects of the solution, please read this blog by Glenn Sizemore, Product Manager at VMWare

Additional resources:

For further information on how to get started with integrating FSx for NetApp ONTAP in your VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC, please contact your VMware or AWS representative.

For more information related to VMware Cloud on AWS, here are some key resources you can use:

Disclaimer: VMware makes no guarantee that services announced in preview will become available at a future date. The information in this blog is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into any contract. This article may contain hyperlinks to non-VMware websites that are created and maintained by third parties who are solely responsible for the content on such websites.

Hitendar Sethi

Hiten is a passionate product marketer who loves to write about modern applications and technology's impact on the business. At VMware, he leads product marketing for Modern Apps on VMware…

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